Analysis tools used in People Practice
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis comprehensively reviews an organisation’s Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats, and Strengths. This exercise allows organisations to identify prospective forces that may impact them. This framework is advantageous for the identification of a variety of organisational challenges, hazards, and opportunities.
Advantages of SWOT analysis
The SWOT analysis is a simple and well-defined tool that assists team members in rapidly classifying strategic organisational factors. Additionally, a comprehensive evaluation of an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its opportunities and threats, enables the development of a comprehensive perspective that facilitates decision-making and planning to capitalize on strengths and address weaknesses (Benzaghta et al., 2021).
Disadvantages of SWOT analysis
SWOT analyses are influenced by the participants’ perceptions. Furthermore, they offer a temporal picture that is insufficient for evaluating rapidly changing external contexts; the four-quadrant typology excessively highlights the independence of concerns while neglecting their interactions.
In summary, a SWOT analysis enables an organisation to identify and adjust its strengths and weaknesses in response to emerging competitors, viewing them as opportunities and threats within the business landscape (Puyt et al., 2023). For instance, a retail organisation that new market entrants threaten can consider its key differentiated factors, customers’ loyalty, and efficiency gains with the consideration of technologies.
Analysis methods used in People Practice
Surveys
Surveys are a quantitative data collection method that limits the targeted audience to gather insights on their perceptions, behaviors, or experiences (Nardi, 2018). This approach is beneficial when analyzing pathology and the potential for change in an organisation.
Advantages of surveys
The advantages of surveys, which can include comprehensiveness, are that they can also encompass a large number of individuals in order to produce a set that can accurately represent an entire organisation. This is due to the fact that they reduce the degree of variation in the results, which facilitates comparison, as all forms are standardized (Nardi, 2018). Additionally, due to the anonymity of the respondents, it is possible to obtain more insightful feedback from employees regarding matters that may be uncomfortable to them.
Disadvantages of surveys
The majority of surveys are less informative and unobtrusive due to the fact that they only provide basic statistics, which can obscure critical information. Additionally, there is a potential for response bias in the results of this study, as several participants provide culturally acceptable responses rather than their own opinions (Creswell & Hirose, 2019). In addition, the collection of inaccurate information and misinformation can result from asking incorrect questions, which would undermine the objective of a survey to identify issues.
Surveys can be used to capture the state of organisational opportunities, such as growth potential, by capturing employees’ perceptions of trends in emerging markets and customers’ attitudes towards products and services, among other aspects that portray the organisation’s ability to expand (Creswell & Hirose, 2019). For example, the data obtained through surveys could assist a company in considering introducing new products and gaining a better understanding of the organisational readiness for expansion and the knowledge of employees regarding customer requirements.
